The Standard of Comparison
by Agent Otter
Summary: Living with ghosts and learning to let go.


Title: The Standard of Comparison  
  
Author: Otter   
  
Email: agentotter@earthlink.net   
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Pairings: Jack/Daniel   
  
Spoilers: "Lifeboat"   
  
Warnings: Character death   
  
Summary: Living with ghosts and learning to let go.   
  
Notes: This is my first SG story. I'm not really in the fandom so I couldn't find a beta reader and I've no idea if I've pulled off what I was going for. I hope it makes some sense. Feedback is my friend.   
  
Disclaimer: If they were mine, there'd be a lot more skin. Roll on.  
  
"True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors; it merely becomes the standard of comparison, the price which one would pay for many things." - Stendhal  
  
He brushes the sand from his robes as he hauls himself to his feet, snaps the notebook shut with a sound and gesture that speaks of finality. He doesn't want to glare at the wall -- it feels childish and petty and stupid -- but he does anyway. He scowls at the curious little pock-marks in the stone, orderly little rows and clusters like braille reversed, one of the simplest writing forms he's ever seen but yet another which he cannot decipher. The puzzles are becoming more difficult -- or he's becoming less capable -- and it's happening more often lately. He's tempted to tip his canteen over his face in an effort to wash away the dust, make himself feel a little less like a forgotten artifact, but he's aware of how precious water is in the desert. He takes a sip instead, and swallows even though it tastes like mud.   
  
Suddenly he's not alone anymore; the heated air pushing through the open entryway is interrupted for a moment by a windbreak in the form of people. He looks up at them, squinting. Colonel Casey and the local boy, Wasim. The boy's name means graceful and good-looking. Daniel thinks that it comes more from parental wishful thinking than from any attributes that Wasim has ever displayed. Casey strides in, all confidence and annoyance, and Wasim follows along at his heels like the flea-bitten, starved little dog that glued itself to Daniel's ankles at the marketplace yesterday. Behind them, Jack swaggers through the entry with a decidedly calmer gait, flashing Daniel a grin.   
  
"What the hell are you wearing?" Casey says. There's a snap in his voice, but Daniel's used to it; the heat has put everyone on edge.   
  
Daniel looks down at himself. The robes -- sandy browns and deep reds -- haven't changed any since he slipped them on this morning. "Clothes," he answers.   
  
"You're out of uniform," Casey patiently points out. Jack doesn't say anything; he just wanders over to the wall and squints at it as if it's a piece of abstract art. Jack doesn't get abstract art.   
  
"It's better than being in uniform," Daniel says, reasonably. Casey's down to a t-shirt, and it's drenched in sweat. His tan is turning into a sunburn. Daniel feels almost comfortable.   
  
"You look like Lawrence of Arabia," Jack comments. Daniel looks over at him; Jack's smiling, an expression made almost enigmatic by the sunglasses over his eyes.   
  
Casey doesn't comment. Maybe he isn't a Peter O'Toole fan. He just glares at Daniel and asks, "Any progress?"   
  
Daniel scowls, and he sees Jack wincing in sympathy from the corner of his eye. "None," he says. "I just can't -- I can't. Maybe we should have the new guy come out. Branahan. It never hurts to get a fresh perspective on a problem like this."   
  
Casey grunts his frustration. "Doctor Jackson, to be quite honest, I think this little experiment of the General's is a damned failure, and I haven't got the slightest idea why they keep you around." He turns on his heel and strides out again, and Daniel just watches him go, silent. Jack's standing with his mouth hanging open, obviously so surprised by the insult that his brain is having trouble processing the fact that it was issued. Wasim pauses in the doorway and tells Daniel, in halting English, that the evening meal will be ready by sundown, and he should come back to the village before it gets dark.   
  
Daniel nods, and offers him a smile, then turns back to the wall.   
  
Jack finally finds his voice and says, "That guy's got some goddamn nerve."   
  
"I think the word you were looking for is 'seniority', Jack. He's got seniority."   
  
"I've made generals and senators quake in their boots," Jack argues, with a scowl. "I think I can take one bird colonel. Besides, he'll never know what hit him. I'm a sneaky guy."   
  
"He'd blame me," Daniel says, a little more sharply than intended. "Leave it alone."   
  
Jack sighs a sigh that means acquiescence without so many syllables, and they stand shoulder-to-shoulder for a few minutes, just staring at the wall.   
  
"I'll bet it's something useless anyway," Jack says finally, in an undertone. "I'll bet it's somebody's shopping list. 'Bread. Eggs. Head of boar. Yak steaks.'"   
  
"Yeah, well..." Daniel says, then he trails off, forgetting what he was about to say. "I guess we'll never know," he continues, after a moment. "I doubt the SGC will waste their time sending someone else out here when there's not a lot of potential, anyway. If these people had any great weapons, they would've used them to avoid being conquered themselves."   
  
"That's an excellent point," Jack concedes. "Though why anybody would want to conquer this place is a mystery anyway. Especially a Goa'uld. You'd think that being aquatic, they'd want to avoid the desert planets."   
  
"I doubt they expect to be separated from their hosts," Daniel replies, dryly. "Not any more than I'd expect to take a vacation in Pittsburgh and be attacked by rabid giraffes."   
  
"Yeah," Jack agrees, as they step together out the entryway and onto the broad, shallow steps outside. "I can't really picture you in Pittsburgh."   
  
Daniel smiles, both at Jack and at the feel of the late-afternoon sun on his face. He squints into the distance, in the direction of the nomads' tent village, and he can still see the faintest traces of Casey and Wasim's tracks disappearing over the dunes.   
  
"He doesn't like you much," Jack says, and Daniel doesn't have to ask who he's talking about. "You have that effect on people."   
  
Daniel's smile vanishes and he lets out a puff of breath. "More, lately," he says. "It's... difficult for them."   
  
Jack scowls. "Not like it is for you. Not nearly. Still getting the headaches?"   
  
Daniel shrugs, which means yes.   
  
"It's only going to get worse," Jack tells him. They stroll down the steps and out into the desert, and they don't speak anymore, because they both know it's true, and neither wants to acknowledge what must be done.   
  
---  
  
Daniel doesn't mind that he failed so much as he minds the compassionate, slightly disappointed look on Hammond's face. Jack doesn't seem to be too thrilled about it, either; he's slouching in the next chair, looking like a schoolboy called to the principal's office.   
  
"I've read Colonel Casey's report," he begins, slowly. "He seems to be of the opinion that you're not yet prepared to return to the field, Doctor Jackson."   
  
Daniel looks down at his hands, his fingers weaved together in his lap. "I can't say I find that opinion surprising," he says. "Or inaccurate."   
  
"Daniel--" Jack protests, but Daniel cuts him off with a sharp wave of the hand.   
  
"Damn it, Jack," he hisses, "let me finish." He takes a breath to drain away some of the irritation before he turns back to Hammond, who has that carefully guarded, wary look on his face. Daniel knows the look. He's seen it before, on the faces of his teammates, as seen from the padded floor of a rubber room. "I think I can guess," Daniel continues, "what Colonel Casey had to say. I couldn't make any sense of the translation. I was tired and unfocused. Absent-minded. Isolated. More than a little bit spooky." His laugh is harsh and he surprises himself with how little it sounds like Daniel Jackson, idealist.   
  
"You're not *spooky*," Jack says, petulantly. Daniel ignores him.   
  
"General, I appreciate that you were willing to give me this chance," Daniel says. "But it's obvious to me and to everyone else that I'm not just dead weight out there; I'm a liability."   
  
Hammond frowns, a score of little wrinkles appearing on his face. "You're being too hard on yourself, son," he says, quietly. "But yes, the basic idea is the same. We still don't know enough about your... condition. How it's manifesting. How it might affect you. Doctor Frasier tells me you're still having those headaches, and she says you seem distracted all the time. I'm hesitant to put you in a position where that distraction might endanger your life or the lives of others. So the question is, Doctor Jackson -- Daniel -- what do *you* want to do about all this?"   
  
"Don't I have a say? I am his team leader," Jack points out.   
  
"No," Daniel tells him. "You don't." Jack slouches a little further, looking positively brooding. Daniel turns back to Hammond and says, "I'd like to continue on with the project for as long as I'm able. I realize my skills are... diminishing. But I think I've got some usefulness in me yet. I could just work here on base."   
  
Hammond nods, gently, and Daniel knows that this is exactly what the General had planned, too. "We'll see how it goes," he says. "I'd like for you to check in with Janet in two days for another physical. And I've scheduled a meeting for you with Doctor MacKenzie next week."   
  
Jack hauls himself to his feet with more nimbleness than Daniel would've given him credit for. "You don't need that," he tells Daniel, who wouldn't disagree. "He doesn't need that," he repeats to the General. "He's fine. We're fine. No shrinks!" He's still fuming as he stomps out the door.   
  
Daniel winces, and apologizes automatically. "Sorry, General," he says. "Jack's been... stressed."   
  
Hammond gives him a sad look and says, "Please inform Colonel O'Neill that I'd like to see him in my office tomorrow morning. We need to have a talk."   
  
Daniel nods, takes this statement as the dismissal that it is, and follows Jack out the door, albeit more sedately. Jack is just outside, pacing, as Daniel knew he would be. "Grounded!" he wails. "Grounded, for God's sake! And MacKenzie just to rub the salt in. Nice work there, Daniel."   
  
Daniel sighs and says, "Sorry, Jack," but there's no animosity between them. They take the elevator together up to the surface, and they both climb into Daniel's car -- he sold the old one and got a hardy little Jeep, which is a sort of compromise. At Jack's house, they skip dinner and go straight to bed; Daniel strips down to his boxers and throws on one of Jack's Air Force t-shirts. He says, "Hammond wants to see you in the morning," and Jack says, "Okay," and then they both climb into bed, and lay side-by-side, staring at the ceiling until they fall asleep.   
  
They dream of Dhaka.   
  
Sam's face was smeared with soot and blood, and her fingers seemed to have stopped working, because she'd dropped her P-90 further back in the corridor. Her hands were pressed against her wound, trying to keep the blood and intestines inside, but it wasn't working. She stumbled again, and made the little squeaking sound that mice make when owls catch them. Jack held onto her as she fell, and they sank to the floor together, huddled against a crystal wall as Teal'c stopped and doubled back to cover their flank, and Daniel lowered Jacob Carter -- in worse shape than his daughter, and far beyond the abilities of his symbiote -- to the floor for a rest.   
  
"Jake," Jack said, his voice rough and twisted. His hands were covered with Sam's blood. "The Tok'ra--"   
  
Jacob shook his head. "Already gone," he gasped out, with breath from lungs that should've already failed. "And I'm too weak to use a healing device even if we had one." He paused and clutched at his chest, where there seemed to be too much blood for any one body to hold. "Jack, you're the only one who actually saw the nest. You're the only one who knows anything about their weaknesses, who'd know how to get a bomb in here. You have to get out, or none of us will matter anyway."   
  
"Maybe Janet can--" Daniel began to say, but Sam had already released one last shuddering breath, and was still.   
  
Jack refused to leave her there, but eventually the advance of their pursuers made the decision for him. He couldn't save her anymore, and they couldn't save Jacob, either; the General stopped fighting when his daughter died, Selmac gave up the struggle, and man and symbiote slipped away. Jack gently laid Sam's body on the hard stone floor next to her father, Teal'c hauled Jack up by the back of his vest, and the three remaining men dashed down the corridor as if they could run from the memory of all that blood.   
  
Teal'c was the next to fall, and he did it without fanfare or final words. He simply toppled over mid-stride, crashing face-first into the ground. Daniel looked back only long enough to see the bristling group of foot-long darts protruding from the dead man's back, and the shadowy shape that had fired them scuttling around a bend in the corridor. He grabbed Jack and shoved him, forced him to keep running when he knew Jack's first impulse would be to stop for the Jaffa. There was no time left, for any of them.   
  
They were only a few feet away from the ring platform and relative safety on the planet's surface when they were both hit; Jack cried out as he fell, three of the spikes buried deep in his back, and Daniel caught him, fumblingly, trying to ignore the pain of the projectile that was buried in his own leg. Momentum carried them onto the platform, and Daniel hit the remote control on his wrist with a cry of alarm as the first of the creatures rushed them. Then the rings descended, there was a bright flash, and suddenly they were above ground, not far from the Stargate.   
  
"Daniel," Jack croaked, "I have to tell you... you have to warn them..." He couldn't seem to finish the thought, and the effort of trying was too much; he slumped in Daniel's arms, unconscious. But Daniel knew. Their new enemy was worse than the Goa'uld, worse even than than the Replicators, and only Jack knew anything about them at all. Only Jack could offer hope of survival to the planets that lay in their path.   
  
Except Jack was dying; Daniel could tell, as he dragged Jack's limp body toward the Gate, that Jack wasn't going to make it. Janet might be able to keep him alive for a few minutes, a few days even, but he'd never wake up again, never tell anyone what he knew. They had no allies to call upon anymore, no advanced alien races to offer help, no Goa'uld sarcophagus to borrow. Daniel propped his fallen friend up against the DHD and stood for a moment, staring down at the symbols until they jumbled in his mind.   
  
He dialed P2A-347.   
  
Jack wakes in his own bedroom, but for a moment he's disoriented. He looks over at Daniel, lying next to him but no longer asleep. Daniel looks back, smiles faintly. "Morning," he mutters.   
  
"Morning," Jack replies, even quieter, and it sounds like nothing more than Daniel's voice echoing back again. Jack crawls out of bed, strips off the Air Force t-shirt and boxers, takes a two-minute shower. He manages to shave without looking into the mirror too much, and goes back out into the bedroom. There's a lot of clothes in the closet now, for the both of them, and Jack pulls out a pair of BDU's in Daniel's size. The Earth, SG-1 and Air Force patches are already displayed on the shoulders, and Jack grabs another patch from the shelf in the closet -- this one a name plate that says "O'NEILL" -- and slaps it on to the velcro fastener above the left breast pocket. He dresses quickly, and finds Daniel in the kitchen, sitting at the table and staring moodily out the window.   
  
Jack makes toast, and eggs, and some toaster waffles, and sits down to eat while Daniel watches, sullen. Jack likes to pack a good meal down, when it's his turn.   
  
"I still think we should go back and fix this," Jack says. He's acutely aware of the sound of his own voice, the motion of his own body, because neither are really his.   
  
Daniel doesn't need to ask what Jack's talking about. "Can we please stop arguing about this?" he says. "I'm starting to get the feeling that saving your life was a bad idea."   
  
Jack scowls, but Daniel scowls back, so Jack doesn't say what he wants to say. Instead, he asks, "If you had it all to do over again--"   
  
Daniel cuts him off, leaning over the table, face looking fierce and drawn. "If I had it all to do over again, I would've told the Tok'ra to stuff it when they asked us to help with their pest problem. I would've busted a couple of limbs -- mine, yours, doesn't matter -- so that Hammond would take SG-1 off the roster entirely. I would've done anything to keep it all from happening, to keep from losing everyone, but God *damn* it, Jack, it did happen, and I didn't have any other choices. P2A-347 was it."   
  
"You could've let me die," Jack points out, reasonably.   
  
Daniel shakes his head, a vigorous denial. "No," he says. "The intel would've died with you. It saved us, Jack, remember? What you knew saved Earth, saved countless other planets from invasion. Again."   
  
"That's not why you did it, Daniel," Jack says. He eyes Daniel and wonders what they'd look like, to anyone who could see them both now. But no one can.   
  
"It's too early in the morning for personal revelations," Daniel says. "Let it go."   
  
So he does, for a whole five minutes, while he shovels down the rest of breakfast. He takes his dishes to the sink and washes them, then sits down at the table again, regarding Daniel solemnly. "It wasn't like this with Martice and the others," he says, calmly, as if he were discussing the weather. "You don't remember, but I was there. It wasn't like this at all."   
  
Daniel shrugs and abandons his seat, walking toward the door as a silent prompt to Jack that it's time to get going. "They were aliens. Plus, I didn't let them in," he points out. "It wasn't my choice."   
  
"Daniel," Jack says, stopping at the door. He peers at his friend, intense and serious. "It wasn't my choice, either."   
  
Daniel grimaces as if he's been struck, and shrinks back against the wall, looking at the floor. He doesn't say anything.   
  
"I'm not needed anymore," Jack says. "The intel I had has been passed on. Daniel, I'm dead."   
  
"No," Daniel denies, anguished. "No. I saved you. You're here. You're right here."   
  
"I died on P2A-347," Jack says, wishing that stating the truth out loud didn't make him feel like he was kicking a puppy. "This... arrangement, that we're in, isn't fair to anybody. Not to me, not to you, not to the other people who care about you. I know you don't feel ready to let me go, Daniel, but you never will, not the way I'm hanging around now. I'm going to talk to Hammond today, and I'm going to ask him to call Pharrin's people. I'm going to ask him to send a team to take you back to the Stromos."   
  
Daniel's sob is choked, and there's a sharp pain in Jack's head. He remembers it well: the old nail-in-brain effect. He wonders if it's just the regular strain and gradual degeneration that Janet's warned them about, or if it's Daniel trying to push back into control, to stop him from leaving. Either way, Jack stays where he is, and watches his friend fall apart. He wishes he could touch the younger man, draw him into a hug, kiss his hair like he used to with Charlie. But you can't touch something that isn't there, and you can't give hugs when you're dead.   
  
"I'm killing you, Daniel," Jack says, using his fingertips to massage uselessly at his aching temple. "I'm not supposed to be here and it's hurting you. I want you to live your life again, and I want to stop living this half-life."   
  
"I don't want to be alone," Daniel whispers. The sound is raw and piteous, and Jack feels his gut twisting with the hurt of it. He wonders if the sensation is his, or Daniel's.   
  
"You won't be," Jack says. He puts his hand on the doorknob, hesitates, then turns it. "I love you," he says, as early morning sunlight and sharp, fresh air flood in through the open doorway. Daniel says it at the same time, in the same miserable tone, and it produces another eerie echo effect, with Daniel's voice in stereo, speaking on behalf of two different men. "I really do," Jack presses on. "You're the best friend I ever had, but we lost each other a while ago now. I'm just an echo of everything we used to be. Let it go. Let me go."   
  
They step outside, and Jack takes a deep breath in, enjoying the first-hand sensations of the morning. They stand there for a few minutes, silent and buried under the weight of each other, and then Jack retreats down the steps toward the Jeep, looking at Daniel's face reflecting where his own should be in the passenger side window.   
  
"Hurry it up," Jack says, as if it's just another morning, "I've got a meeting to get to."   
  
Daniel shivers, then shakes himself, as if he's waking up from a dream. He prowls down to the curb and hovers by the Jeep before climbing in through the door that Jack holds open for him. Jack circles the vehicle and climbs in, starts up the engine and pulls away from the curb. Daniel is huddled against the passenger-side door, staring out the window.   
  
"Wake me when we get there?" he says, quietly. "I'd like to... we can... talk, maybe. Before we go back to the Stromos."   
  
Jack nods and says, "Yeah, Daniel. Yeah. You get some rest. We'll talk later."   
  
Daniel sighs and hunkers down against the door. When Jack glances over again, he's gone, retreating back to darker, quieter places where he can be by himself -- as much by himself as he can be, anymore -- and make himself accustomed to the feeling. Jack misses his presence immediately. He looks up at himself in the rearview mirror, sees Daniel's eyes looking back, and smiles Daniel's smile.  
  
-- end -- 


End file.
